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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29956491">Thirty</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/snapephobic/pseuds/snapephobic'>snapephobic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Birthday, Birthday Party, Birthday Presents, Fluff, Happy Remus Lupin, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Memories, Party, Post-Hogwarts, Pre-Canon, Remus Lupin's Birthday</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:27:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,226</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29956491</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/snapephobic/pseuds/snapephobic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus Lupin is nearly thirty years old when he realizes he's done absolutely nothing with his life.</p><p>(A birthday fic)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Thirty</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>happy birthday remus!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>March 9th, 1990, 11:55 P.M.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Remus hadn’t meant to stay up past nine o’clock. He usually ate dinner at seven, started getting ready for bed at eight, and was in his room reading by nine. But he’d ran out of butter in the middle of making dinner, and he couldn’t very well live without butter, could he? So he ran to the nearest Tesco, grabbing several bars of chocolate along with his butter, and by the time he arrived home, it was nearly nine already. Figuring his schedule was already disrupted to the point of disaster, he continued like normal, only a few hours later than usual. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Dinner at 9:30, ready for bed at 10:30, and reading by 11:30.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And so it was nearly midnight, and Remus was reading a muggle American book called “To Kill a Mockingbird.” He was finding it quite interesting, actually, but had a bad feeling about it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He turned the page, glanced at his clock, looked away, then did a double take. You see, his clock had the date on its face as well, and for the first time Remus realized that it was almost his birthday. His </span>
  <em>
    <span>30th</span>
  </em>
  <span> birthday.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’d had twenty-nine birthdays so far. The first one he could remember was his sixth, when his mum and dad took him to London for a trip to the London Zoo. His worst birthday was in 1982, his first birthday without Sirius, James, and Peter in a very long time. But his best birthday?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Putting down the book, he pulled the drawer of his bedside table open, pulling out a picture. A simple Polaroid, a photograph of four boys. One, strutting around the scene, looking longingly off into the distance. One, waddling behind the first, joking with him and laughing. And one with the tallest boy on his back, both looking at each other with what could only be described as love in their eyes. The note on the Polaroid read, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Remus’ 16th, 1976.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He remembered that day so clearly. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It had been a dry winter, with little bad weather and lots of sun filled days. On Remus’ sixteenth birthday, it reached a miraculous 20</span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>° </em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span>C, which led to the boys waking him up extra early, claiming “he needed the Vitamin C anyways,” (Sirius), “they needed plenty of time to do everything they’d planned for the day,” (James), and Peter had fallen back asleep already, so who knew what he had to say. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They dragged him out of bed and downstairs, not even giving him the chance to put some clothes on. After the initial shock at seeing the common room redone in the exact print of his favorite sweater, Remus started to truly get excited. Who knew what else they had planned?</span>
  </em>
  <em></em>
    <span></span><br/>

  
  <em>
    <span><br/>
</span>
  </em>
  <em></em>
  <span>As the whole school sang to him for breakfast, Remus had beamed, thrilled at the fact that he had friends who would do this for him, who would do anything for him if he asked them to. He was truly a part of a group for the first time in his life, and while he’d been best friends with them since first year, they were showing themselves to be </span>
  <span>his marauders. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There were countless little things they did for him during the day, from pranking Snape to doing Remus’ transfiguration homework for him (he was hopeless at the writing bit,) among other things.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The party that night was action-packed, with a group of Ravenclaws drugging half of the first year Gryffindors in the first ten minutes, James and Sirius playing an impromptu game of Quidditch With No Snitch against Marlene and Dorcas, and a game of stacking the hundreds of mason jars that Sirius and James had found behind Honey</span>
  </em>
  <span>d</span>
  <em>
    <span>ukes-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Remus put down the Polaroid, his eyes moving to the little stack of mason jars in the corner of his room that he’d kept all those years. They were secured with magic, seemingly precariously placed but completely safe. Simple sticking charm was all. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He glanced back at the clock. </span>
  <em>
    <span>11:57.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Three minutes left. He looked back down at the picture.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>After the last of the partygoers had gone back to their rooms, the Marauders sat in a circle in front of the fireplace. Peter pulled out his gift first. Remus was thrilled to see the new Wizard’s Chess set he’d gotten. Next up was James, and as the birthday boy carefully opened the wrapping paper and cut open the large box, he was delighted to find what appeared to be half of Honeydukes’ stock of chocolate.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Finally it was Sirius’ turn, declaring that he “hadn’t had the time to wrap it” which just meant that he’d been too lazy to wrap it, but it was the thought that counted, Remus supposed. Especially when the former whipped out not one, but three of the sweaters Remus had been eyeing at Christmas, along with a huge box of dung bombs.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Sirius announced that they had one final surprise for him. Remus was a bit worried by what else they might have in store for him, and how he would repay them, and was shocked to see a stag, a dog, and a rat sitting where James, Sirius, and Peter had been. He thought he was hallucinating for a moment when he blinked and saw the boys again, only to see them transform back into animals with his very own two eyes.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That was the night he knew he had a true family, a family who wouldn’t judge him for who he was, a family who would be there for him forever.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>11:58 P.M.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The photo had been taken that afternoon, after a fun-packed day of harmless public humiliation and chocolate. They’d just had a picnic down by the Black Lake, and were practically bursting with energy; James running around, throwing a snitch and trying to catch it, despite not being a seeker, and looking distractedly off into the distance at Lily; Peter following his every move, chattering excitedly about his girlfriend, Bertha Jorkins (Remus thought she was a bit annoying, always gossiping about every little thing she heard, but that was a conversation for another day;) and Sirius asking Remus if he wanted him to carry him around on his back(a sucker for not exercising, Remus said yes, of course), and they spent hours giggling over the smallest things and making pleasant company.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Marlene took the picture with her new color camera and magical film, creating an automatically moving wizard photo. They’d all crowded around her as she showed them how to use it, despite not trusting anyone other than Lily with it.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Mary had written on it, as she had with all of her wizarding photos. Even after she left the wizarding world to live a muggle life, she kept her old photo album, which was where Remus had gotten the picture. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>11:59 P.M.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ten seconds, counting down until he was thirty, until he was an actual adult, who had done barely any actual adulting.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Five seconds till he’d been without Sirius for going-on nine years.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>One second till-</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>March 10th, 1990, 12:00 A.M.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Remus heard the church bells in the distance.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was thirty, and his first thought was that he’d better get a move on with his life before it was wasted.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i may or may not have taken two whole hours to write this</p><p>it's 2 am and i'm very tired so i'm sorry if it's bad</p></blockquote></div></div>
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